The Bengals OTAs Reveal Team's Singular Super Bowl Focus
John Sheeran discusses recent comments from Cincinnati Bengals cornerback DJ Turner stating the team is focused on winning the Super Bowl during team OTAs.
Video Transcript
The roster isn't the only reason why I feel pretty good about where the Bengals are right now.
It's what's being said and what isn't happening that has me thinking this is gonna be a little bit different and a little bit better compared to recent years.
And honestly, to some extent, it's making my job a little bit more difficult, but in a very good way.
I'm John Scheer of A to Z Sports Cincinnati.
This is A to Z Sports Cincinnati, covering your Cincinnati Bengals throughout the 2026 off-season.
Something that came to mind recently is, over the past couple of years, it's always felt like the biggest stories surrounding the Bengals have more to do with what's going on in the off-season, rather than what's going on during the actual season when, you know, the games are being played.
A lot of it has had to do with contract negotiations.
A lot of it has had to do with Joe Burrow's relationship with the organization as a whole.
A lot of it has had to do with are the Bengals actually serious about competing for a championship and bringing one finally to Cincinnati?
There have been many a think piece about this.
I've written a lot of them.
And really since they achieved a level of playoff success that they haven't achieved in over 30 years, it's always been about how can they get back there, and what are the steps that they're taking to make sure that that is going to happen?
And this part has always been true.
It goes beyond the Bengals.
It's true for every single organization in the league.
What happens in the front office, it trickles down all the way to the locker room.
Players for the most part, for the vast majority of the time, they stick to their business.
They do their job.
They go out there.
They put it all on the line.
They try to win games.
They do what's best for themselves.
They do what's best for the team.
But ultimately, at the end of the day, they're pretty laser-focused on just being a player and not worrying about whatever th- and not really worrying about what else is going on within the building.
This is especially true for the younger players without a lot of, you know, actual security to stay on the team, just guys who are just trying to stay, you know, employed by the league itself.
But for the players who have been around the team for, you know, multiple years, who are established players within the locker room, within the community, you know, they're known to fans, they speak to the media a lot, and they have thoughts on what the team should or shouldn't do, if they've sensed that there's not as much or nearly enough buy-in from the organization and the front office as a collective to put forth the best product, and not, not just the best product, the best team on the field, and give the locker room a chance to actually go out there and achieve the highest sort of goal that you can achieve, then that does have an impact.
And of course, the opposite is true as well, especially if you've developed a reputation for not acting a certain way during the off-season, and building the roster, and reloading it to a point in which, yeah, there's a lot of confidence that this group can actually do something.
Fans of the Bengals don't want the Bengals to act like they're going all in and being aggressive in building the team just for the sake of feeling good about the team, but also for the impact that it has on that locker room.
When players are taken care of, and they're given the resources to go out there and just compete and do their job and not worry about other external factors, and worry about, "Am I being wasted away here surrounded by not enough talent?"
It has a definite impact.
And I think we really started to see that over the past month and a half, specifically after the Dexter Lawrence trade, because all indications and all notions from off-season workouts and media being in there, the vibe is really promising, not just from a positive sense of guys, you know, being cool with each other, but they're all laser-focused on one thing, winning the Super Bowl.
Think about the past few years for Tee Higgins specifically.
You know, during his rookie contract, he's established himself as the partner in crime to Ja'Marr Chase.
He has a phenomenal Super Bowl in just his second year in the league.
He's a core member of the Bengals offense and just the franchise in general.
He's just billing himself as a building block for the team for years to come.
2023 comes around, he's eligible for a contract extension for the first time.
He's trying to get paid.
He ends up not getting that contract as early as possible, right?
He requests a trade because he realizes that, you know, the current situation is just not working out for him, and he wants to be recognized.
He wants to be respected as one of the top receivers in the league.
And there's a lot of distractions from, like, 2023 to 2024.
He eliminates those distractions by firing his agent, starting anew in negotiations, finally getting that extension in 2025 after a bunch of, you know, injury-filled seasons and a lot of distractions.
And 2025 comes around, he makes a Pro Bowl for the first time, but obviously the team is not, you know, positioned well to compete and get back to the playoffs.
2026 comes around.
He's paid.
He's got a Pro Bowl to his name.
He's firmly established in this locker room as a leader.
He's in the prime of his career.
All he's thinking about right now is hosting the Lombardi Trophy.
D.J.
Turner is an even better example of this, because he was drafted right after the Bengals went to the AFC Championship for the second consecutive year.
And for the first three seasons of his career, he has not been an established starter.
He's coming off the bench.
He's playing for Chidobe Awuzie.
He's got, he's dealt with injuries.
He suffered a season-ender in 2024 when he was finally playing really well, and then he has to earn a starting s- job again at the beginning of 2025.
He has a career year, and now he's entering a contract year himself.
And he could have taken the route of just skipping out, you know, all the voluntary workouts and, you know, only reporting to mandatory mini camp potentially just to watch, and setting himself up to have a hold in during training camp while contract negotiations happen, but that is not his mindset.
That is not his focus right now.
When asked about why he reported to OTAs amid contract negotiations, Turner told Paul Dehner Jr. of The Athletic, quote, "It's definitely a good vibe right now.
We did add a whole bunch of players on our side of the ball, and it's just exciting, honestly.
Everybody wants to win.
I was the last one here.
This was my second day, and I could tell everybody was just on the same page, wanting to work, wanting to win.
That's what it all comes down to, those two things."
The Bengals have had perfect attendance for the last week of their off-season program.
They're gonna have perfect attendance for mandatory mini camp.
There's a lot of questions about the future of this team, the future of Zac Taylor, how many players are actually gonna c- can he How many players are actually gonna continue to be here beyond this year in case everything kinda goes kaput and there's a complete reset with the coaching staff?
And by the way, that's a very real concern because this is the penultimate year of Zac Taylor's contract.
If they don't get back to the post-season, if they don't get close to winning their first Super Bowl-Then there's a very real chance that Zach Taylor's not gonna be here in 2027, and then a new coach comes in, and he completely resets the roster, and everything goes back to square one.
There is a real sense of urgency, but it has birthed something extremely promising, and it makes me optimistic about what this team has going for them entering the year, where their mind really is.
And that could just be a missing ingredient to what this team has needed over the past couple of years, right?
It's not just the front office finally doing things that give players confidence that they're being taken care of and that they're in a good position, right?
It's not just the fact that the majority of major contracts for these players have already been taken care of, and some of the ones that have yet to be done, well, it's not gonna stop players from actually practicing, and there's not gonna be any holdouts or hold-ins that prevent that from the team getting as good as possible leading up to the season.
I think, in general, just the pressure on this roster, on this team as a whole, to get something done this year, of getting back to the postseason, and once that they're there, that we talked about earlier this week, they're always a danger of going far.
Just getting there, and the pressure if they do not get there, and what could happen in 2027, I really think it's lighting a fire under these players, and it's causing them to focus at this point in the off-season as a collective, as 100% of the lo- of the locker room is completely focused on one thing and one thing only.
I think that pressure is what is causing this and what has been missing over the past couple of years.
Because honestly, there are things over the past two seasons specifically, regardless if the quarterback has been healthy or not, there have been instances, there have been disappointments, letdowns in specific games that, if it happened to any other team, the head coach would've been fired.
That's just, that, that's the reality.
Zach Taylor would not have lasted seven years in, for the vast majority of NFL teams out there, not with the losing record, not with missing the playoffs three consecutive years.
There's already questions about is the Bengals coaching staff going to hold this team back?
It might be the biggest question about the Bengals in 2026.
But Zach Taylor is very fortunate that he is employed by the Bengals.
And if there isn't that major level of accountability, then where does that pressure actually come from?
Well, maybe it comes now.
Maybe it comes after this year, and maybe the people inside that building know it.
Maybe they know that this is their best shot at getting back to a position of actually achieving the promised land, right?
Because they've never actually been to the promised land.
They've been close, and that was five years ago.
It's time to get back there, and the time is now.
It's quite the recipe the Bengals have put together here.
They did the right things in the off-season, in the spring, of reloading and rebuilding the team.
That has given the players themselves confidence that the team is in a good spot and that they will be taken care of if they haven't already been taken care of this off-season by the time the games actually begin.
But regardless, they are focused on getting ready for the season as much as possible as 100% collective in that locker room without any distractions, and they know that there is pressure on them to win now in 2026 because in 2027, all bets are off.
And while everything may not be perfect right now, there are some things that they still need to do before September arrives.
It's why I feel so much better about this Bengals team right now at this point in the off-season than I have in the past couple of years.
We're gonna be recapping OTAs by the end of this week.
We may even do a mandatory minicamp preview at the end of this week.
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Like this video and comment down below how you feel about the Bengals entering the 2026 season.
